Tag: coaches

The Greatest Halftime Football Speech I Never Remembered Saying

November 7, 2023 / Big Joe

It’s fall semester of my son’s eighth grade year. I coach his youth football team’s offensive line. Several other player’s dads comprise the remainder of the coaching staff. My son and I joined this team a season ago. Since 7 years of age, I coached his football teams in some capacity. This will be the final football season coaching my son. Next year he and his teammates will progress to the high school level and get instructed by their coaching staffs. For a middle aged man, this is quite a milestone.

We fellow coaches invested significant time and effort into coaching our boys these last several years. Because of this, our head coach suggests participating in an end of season youth football tournament in Las Vegas, NV. He billed it as the final blowout before turning over the football coaching reins to the high schools and taking our places in the stadium seats. We unanimously agree that this is a good idea. What could go wrong?

We roll into the first tournament venue comfortably seated on our private, chartered bus. Our opponent came from Bakersfield, CA, where they most likely carjacked their way to Nevada. However, this conclusion only became evident by the end of game. At this point I know nothing about Bakersfield other than it’s a desert town way east of L.A. As we drive past our opponent warming up, I feel unsettled.

Immediately, I reference the football tournament rules. Nothing in the literature suggests that this is a father-son tournament. The Bakersfield team looks enormous. And that’s without pads on. How could these behemoths all be eight-graders? I’m certain some of them are shaving on a daily basis. I think a couple of them have small children, too. We coaches take notice. So do our boys.

Naturally, we played teams that out-sized us before. We were never the biggest squad, but we emphasized game preparation and positional technique execution. In football size looms large, but it does not independently determine gridiron success. I remind myself of this personal postulate while staring at Goliath. Unfortunately, we couldn’t scout Bakersfield before the contest and nobody on our roster is named David. But we still have technique, right?

On the first snap of the game our offensive backfield has more Bakersfield players in it than we do. Instead of tackling our running back, a Bakersfield player lifts him off his feet, drives him backwards, and plants him in the turf. The situation does not improve. Not only does Bakersfield play with great speed and physicality, but they possess just a plain mean and nasty edge. They land punches in the piles, throw elbows after the play, and literally kick our boys when they are down.

As our team exits the field, they gaze at us with a “deer in the headlights” look. Fear emanates and spills out from their helmets. Their bodies appear unstable. They look like they just saw combat for the first time and held no desire to see it again. As the game progresses, the referees seem oblivious to the Southern Cal late hits and Bakersfield sucker punches. Murmurs of forfeiting the game out of safety arises amongst our parents. If something doesn’t change, one of our kids will get seriously injured they say.

We manage to make it to halftime without a single death, dismemberment, puncture wound, or any other game ending injury. But the boys still look shell shocked. If they are to survive this contest, we coaches need to find the right words and motivation to snap them back into the team we believe they can be.

The first thought that runs through my brain is our guys are in a street fight and the only logical response is to fight back with the mindset to fuck up the other team. Hell yeah, fuck ‘em up! However, these are eighth grade boys. Saying that would be inappropriate. I change gears and shift my paradigm to our guys are in a street fight and just got punched in the mouth. The only logical response is to pick themselves up and punch those Bakersfield boys right back in the mouth. Yes, right in the mouth. This is much better.

When it comes my time to speak, I provide my simple, succinct halftime message. It is brief, but I believe it delivers what they need to hear. The boys quietly head back to sidelines, ready to face the third quarter. As I watch them, the offensive coordinator leans in close to my face. He is burley man with a thick, full beard. He speaks quietly through the corner of his mouth, as if imitating a ventriloquist.

“That was best fucking halftime speech I’ve ever heard,” he softly shares.

My head jerks back, attempting to peer into his eyes, but instead catch my reflection in his mirrored sunglasses. Is he busting my chops for my somewhat cliched speech? Did he find it so lame and uninspiring that he needs to give me crap about it, right now?

I give him a quizzical look and ask, “What do you mean?”

In exactly the same manner, he repeats, “That was the best fucking halftime speech I’ve ever heard.”

I now understand he is serious and not pulling my leg. I felt I relayed a useful point to the team and hoped to instill some fight back in the boys, but I don’t think my words would make anybody forget about Knute Rockne. It was just something I thew together about 30 seconds before the words crossed my lips.

Hesitantly, I ask, “What do you think I said?” He lowers his sunglasses so I can now see his eyes while he also points to the football field.

“You told them to go out there and fuck them in the mouth.”

Horrified, I stammer, “I, I did, I did not say that! There’s no way I said that!”

His expression never changes. It feels surreal. It is as if I no longer hold a grasp on reality. Could I have said that and not realized it? Maybe he misheard me, imagining something far more provocative than what I said. As I process the scene, this appears like the most plausible of explanations. Except for one damn, irrefutable reason. Witnesses.

I gave a short, albeit profane, speech in front of players and other football coaches. My words were heard by everybody except me. On the upside, we played far better in the second half.

Fortunately I never saw a member of our team attempt to perform oral fornication on the Bakersfield bad boys. I wonder whether those words shocked our team into playing better or was so off the hook that they completely forgot about the ass kicking they were receiving.

“Did you guys hear what coach said?”

“I know, right. Fuck ‘em in the mouth. Who thinks up shit like that?”

“Coach is whack. Hey, we’re lining up kick return. I guess it’s time to go fuck them in the mouth.”

“Yeah, let’s go bang some braces!”

It’s difficult to feel pride or shame for something in which I draw no recollection. I never consulted with my son to see if that was his memory as well. It would likely have been an awkward and confusing moment, as I never included that topic in the “facts of life” speech to him. Well, at least not that I recall.

Exploding Coaches, Erupting Teachers, & Big Helen’s Cataclysmic Death Slide

May 8, 2023 / Big Joe

When I say my high school days were mostly spent as a C+ student, I’m not bragging about my abilities to write computer code. Far from it. When I was in high school we slid 3 x 5 floppy discs inside terminal ports. I never embraced or fully understood the DOS world. The same could be said for geometry, chemistry, or most STEM subjects. I figured school wasn’t really my thing and college would be a struggle, at best. Some of us aren’t that smart.

During my first year of high school, Dennis Patrick was my freshman football coach. His fiery temperament and explosive personality pushed us to achieve at a high level for fear of incurring his wrath during practice or games. Not all of my friends appreciated his approach or particularly cared for his coaching style. I get it. When emotionally inflamed, he tended to grab players by their facemasks and jerk them around. Coach Patrick could be a hard, unforgiving coach. He also taught U.S. History.

As fate would have it, Fort Hunt High School placed me into his class my junior year.

He brought the same intensity inside the classroom that he carried onto the football field. I brought the same mediocre academic zeal to U.S. History that I carried to all of my other classes. Any illusion that Mr. Patrick might practice selective athletic favoritism rapidly faded early in the first quarter. As with coaching, he targeted the under-performers. With my sub-par test scores, I painted a proverbial bullseye on my back. And he had excellent aim.

He berated me during class for my U.S. History half-heartedness. I performed relatively well on the football field two years prior, so I was unaccustomed to his unwanted classroom attention. No previous teacher ever got up in my face like Dennis Patrick. Frankly, he embarrassed me in front of my classmates. It’s one thing to act like you’re too cool for school. It’s a completely different matter to made the fool. However, he provided a way out.

After successfully cultivating a D that first quarter, he required me and the other academic laggards to outline the textbook’s required readings. Of course I wasn’t really reading the textbook. Not shockingly, this greatly contributed to my lack of understanding in his classroom. Now he forced me to not only read the damn thing, but submit a written account of each chapter. It was not necessarily difficult work, just time consuming.

Weird thing happened.

The more hours I spent reading and outlining the textbook, the more U.S. History I comprehended and mentally retained for subsequent regurgitation. When called upon in class, I actually spouted correct answers instead of mumbling incorrectness or providing dumb looks. The second quarter culminated in a C. Not great, but definitely an improvement. This putting work into academics seemed to produce some discernible results. Who knew?

I don’t believe the other U.S. History teacher required it, but Dennis Patrick assigned us a yearlong 20 page research paper. He said universities would require works that properly cited sources and denoted references and we should know how to complete such a project before entering their esteemed halls. He established an academic year’s timeframe with due dates and benchmarks to measure and guide our progress. Just my dumb luck to get this new learning opportunity.

A 20 page paper seemed like a daunting task. I never wrote anything comparable in length and complexity. A whole school year at least built in a psychological time buffer. It’s not like it’s due next week. And like a coach, he provided step by step instruction on what he expected and how to complete the task. Crawl, walk, run. We’ll start with the basics and build upon them as time passes. We were eating the elephant one bite at a time. Too bad elephant sucks.

I chose to write about the May 18, 1980 Mount St. Helen’s eruption.

My father’s work travels took him to the Pacific Northwest in the early 80’s. The devastating explosion covered surrounding areas in a layer of volcanic ash. In a brilliant marketing move, a hotel bagged this ash into logo marked ziplocks as a memento for customers. My dad brought one home to me. The eruption fascinated me and now I could actually touch its aftermath. I was weird like that. Nothing’s really changed.

All other written assignments up this scholastic point pertained to English classes and were restricted to dissecting books and plays I never wanted to read in the first place. Mr. Patrick allowed us to choose our research paper’s topic. Mount St. Helen was headline news around the world. The tremendous forces of nature violently unleashed on that small community were absolutely apocalyptic. Kind of like Dennis Patrick with novice football players or lazy students.

I learned how to add footnotes and cite research sources. National Geographic became my new favorite publication. Meanwhile, I continued reading the textbook chapters and submitting the written outlines. When called upon in class I now spurted out answers concerning the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans. I referenced historical economic theories of mercantilism and protectionism and seamlessly provided examples of each. Who knew that Whigs didn’t go on your head?

The third quarter I achieved a B. Its shape is not far removed from the D, yet far more academically rewarding. The benefits of reading the textbook and outlining the chapters exponentially increased my desire to learn more and score higher. I actually toyed with the idea of getting an A for the final quarter. Is this how the smart kids felt?

I was not unfamiliar with that grade.

Okay, those classes were typically electives. I got A’s in Physical Education and Gourmet Foods. Except for Sue Hickman’s P.E. class my senior year. Sgt. Sue gave me a C. She forgot the class was supposed to be fun. In fairness, I behaved like an elitist jock and Sue didn’t practice athletic favoritism either. I got the grade I deserved.

Meanwhile back in U.S. History, I discovered my outlines were valuable study guides for tests. The contagion of academic success rapidly spread. The more I achieved, the more I wanted to top my last performance. It really wasn’t any different than sports. I’d just never been given a roadmap to scholastic success, or in this case, had the roadmap stuffed inside my proverbial facemask.

I completed the academic fourth quarter with an A in U.S. History. And I actually understood and enjoyed the topic and could speak quasi-intelligently about it. Maybe not today, but they say memory is the second thing to go. Also, that 20 page research paper proved a fairly painless task. I tackled the assignment better than any opponent I faced on the football field. Inked across the paper’s cover page sat a previously inconceivable A.

I received a B as my cumulative U.S. History grade.

I started slow, but finished strong. I felt proud of how far I’d progressed. I also enjoyed not being the target of Mr. Patrick’s verbal assaults he unleashed on the unknowing, unstudied, and unprepared high school U.S. History desk dwellers. I felt a little bad for them, but Mr. Patrick provided them with the same roadmap. They just never opened their academic Rand-McNally.

I’ve never missed particles of saliva landing on my face while enduring a coach’s or teacher’s tongue lashings. I’ve also never not gained something valuable from it, as well. I likely just need a good slap in the face every so often. And no, that’s not an invitation. But old D.P. taught me how to succeed in the classroom. It was ridiculously simple, but I’d never learned it before my junior year U.S. History class. He was a touch nuts, but probably the best teacher I ever had. And that’s my kind of nuts.

The Dissimilar Delineation of Dated Couches & Deceptive Coaches

March 31, 2022 / Big Joe

It was forest green.

This couch appeared even darker situated in the bowels of our partially completed basement. It owned the wall where it was centered for no other reason than it was the largest piece of usable furniture in the room. Nobody retreated downstairs to stretch out on its cushions, read a good book, or catch the big game. Its domestic placement seemed more like banishment than well-designed feng shui.

The piano rivaled it in size. Their gross weights likely teetered the scale within ounces of one another. The only thing larger was the homemade train table that sucked up the majority of basement floorspace. It least that created a desirable sensation through amusement and entertainment. “Big green” was more akin to a torture device.

This davenport of death frightened me as a child. First and foremost its thick, rough fabric caused my skin to itch within seconds of sitting down. It made wool army blankets feel like cashmere. Even as a husky child, I did not sink into its cushions. The sturdy construction manifested a sense of practicality rather than a feeling of comfort. It was like sitting on a steel gurney wrapped in 20 grit sandpaper.

In the same utilitarian vein, it also converted into a sofa bed.

I’m pretty sure its construction used more steel than the majority of modern day automobiles. Maybe as an adult, I could pull out the steel girders and springs that supported the flimsy two inch mattress. If you were not exhausted and ready to lay down before undertaking this task, you certainly needed the respite afterwards. Not that the bed was any more comfortable than the sofa.

More than once, I caught my finger inside one of its bending metal retractable brackets. You’d be safer to intentionally place a finger or a toe inside a snapping turtle’s mouth. Each moving part inside the hidden bed potentially acted as a small digit guillotine.

Amazingly I never noticed any blood stains on the metallic components.

Nobody maintained these parts and they looked mechanically safe. However, the screeching twangs of popping metallic springs and grinding bars, brackets, and bolts emitted a symphony of discord. It sounded kind of like how I feel when I crawl out of bed these days.

Closing the sofa bed back into a couch seriously took on a Herculean effort. As difficult as it was was to open, the closure more than tripled the levels of physiological output. It felt like trying to squeeze, press, and manipulate a kingsize bed inside a crib.

However, when it comes to longevity, this beastly contraption possessed the capacity to outlast lesser furniture construction designs. I think we could have dropped it off the roof of our house and it would have remained unscathed from the fall. Of course, getting it on the roof would have necessitated a crane. Still, it would have been worth the money to see the forces of nature thwarted by human craftsmanship and engineering.

When I knew him, Al Groh dressed in black and gold.

Not so much by choice, but by design. In the mid-1980’s, Coach Groh held the position and title of Head Football Coach, Wake Forest University. Black & Gold represented the university’s official school colors. Al Groh represented the embodiment of a first time division one collegiate head football coach.

I arrived on the Wake Forest campus in July 1985, ready to embark on my academic and athletic life. Yes, I earned a full athletic grant-in-aid scholarship to play football, but the recruitment process stressed the importance of education and how that translated to future success more so than playing a sport. Maybe I wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, but that selling point struck a chord with me.

Like all head coaches I’d known, Al Groh represented a man to be feared and admired. Not even 18 years old yet, the last thing I wanted was to draw an angry eye from my head coach. Praise from him reigned down like gold nuggets, while his ire could emotionally impoverish you. They say you play for your teammates, but if the coach doesn’t like what he sees, playing is not an option.

Beyond the gridiron, Coach Groh spoke incessantly.

Not in a jovial, back-slapping kind of way. Not like he always had a funny story to share. He rambled more like a verbose hostage taker. Older players warned the freshman of his Friday night pregame speeches. Nothing in my life prepared me for these orations and the sense of internment they fostered.

Sitting through the talks evolved into a ritualistic rite of passage. At least as redshirt freshmen we received a captive audience reprieve since we did not travel with the team for away games. Besides having five years to complete our degrees, we understood this to be the greatest benefit of a redshirt season.

He literally blathered for well past an hour.

By the end, nobody still listened to the words spilling out of his mouth. The room filled with glazed over eyes and vacant stares. It’s difficult to understand how he didn’t realize he’d lost all of us after the first twenty minutes. Yet he stuck to the same monotonous, communicatively ineffective, droning mantra week after week. It actually became physically painful to listen.

By the end of the second semester each player met individually with Coach Groh in his office. I was not spiritually connected at the time, but I prayed it would not entail the same discomfort of the Fall’s Friday night talks. I took the meeting for its intended purpose – a chance for the head coach to talk some more and for me to nod my head and agree with whatever he said.

But he said something that I never saw coming.

With a wry, crooked smile he told me that academics had nothing to do with my attending Wake Forest University. He said, “Let’s be honest. Football is the only reason you’re here, not school.” Like a dumb 18 year old, I blankly nodded my head.

Technically he was correct. Without a football scholarship I never would have been academically competent or financially able to attend that institution. However, Al Groh sold me on the importance of education and how that would impact the rest of my life. The educational opportunity was just as much a factor in my choosing Wake Forest University as was its football team.

For the first time in my life, l recognized that an adult male I blindly trusted, who held me in subjugation, lied to me. He sold me a bill of goods as a teenager and now slyly acted as if we both always understood what he really meant. I’ll never forget his words or the smug, arrogant look on his face that day.

The couch’s design met a need and was likely a handsome piece back in the 1950’s. However, you’d think coziness would factor in on the design and implementation phase. I don’t think Al Groh is an evil or bad man. However, you’d think honesty and integrity would factor in when dealing with kids. Whether it’s dated couches or deceptive coaches, the whole thing just makes me, well, uncomfortable.